The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) Works for the Preservation of Our Liberty

First a Hillary Clinton telephone call and now Turkey: is the BND allowed to eavesdrop on friends or allies? It has to. Comparisons with the NSA’s methods are out of the question.

An intelligence service does its best work when nothing about its operations reaches the public. Secrecy is the core business of the BND. The only problem is that new details keep becoming public. Recently it became public that the BND had eavesdropped on a conversation involving then-U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

Clearly, she wasn’t the intended target of the operation, just a so-called by-catch — but still. The transcript of her conversation wasn’t immediately destroyed, but rather submitted to the BND president for him to read.

Now it has come out that the BND has been spying on Turkey for years. Apparently, since 2009 the country has been a nominal “official target.” After it became known that Angela Merkel’s cell phone had been bugged, the chancellor said that friends shouldn’t spy on each other; now we hear that Merkel and her secret service have made themselves guilty of the same offense.

It’s not about personal moral concepts.

There are two crucial differences being overlooked here. Firstly, in the case of Hillary Clinton, she wasn’t systematically and intentionally targeted, as was the case with the NSA and the chancellor. This is supported by the fact that the transcript was submitted to the BND president personally and didn’t go through the usual channels.

Secondly, in the case of Turkey, we have to concede that a NATO partner fighting for entry into the EU doesn’t necessarily have to be a close ally. The friendship between Germany and the U.S. is in a different league.

A peaceful country such as Germany doesn’t need to carry out such procedures? Au contraire. Peace doesn’t come cheap, and even a peaceful nation such as Germany has to resort to its intelligence service, which doesn’t always conform to our personal moral concepts. That is the day-to-day business of our intelligence service — and we should be glad when they do it professionally.